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Course description: This course is an introduction to game theory and strategic thinking. Ideas such as dominance, backward induction, Nash equilibrium, evolutionary stability, commitment, credibility, asymmetric information, adverse selection, and signaling are discussed and applied to games played in class and to examples drawn from economics, politics, the movies, and elsewhere.

I have had the intention of watching through this, but haven't had the time after the first few lectures. The material is recommended, though.

Since the origin of the computers is unknown, the hardware cannot be trusted. The computers might be hacked and backdoored on the BIOS level. Modern BIOSes are quite sophisticated with a rich functionality, that can be misused invisibly from the OS' point of view.

As I understood, the colo in question was not shut down per se, it was simply severed from its internet connectivity as its upstream/backbone internet providers terminated their contract with them. Nothing special about that; business relationships are initiated and terminated all over the world every day.

Consequently, there was no "vigilanteism" in the strict sense as such, where normals citizens take the law in their own hands and act as if they had higher authority than they really have.

It was simply a case of concerned security researchers going to the upstream providers with evidence and saying "look what scum you do business with by providing connectivity, this is bad for the internet on the whole and it hurts your reputation", and the ISPs in question took action. If innocent customers of the rouge colo got hurt when the lines got cut, then they simply have to suffer the consequences of picking a bad host to buy services from.

Of course, if the proof the security researchers had gathered also proved that the shut-down colo in question had committed crimes, then the appropriate authorities need to be involved. But that is another chain of events, separate from the disconnection of the lines.

If the UI is now snappier and more responsive so that the user feels more happy with his user experience, isn't that still good progress even if in reality the speedup is only subjective? Everything that makes the user more content using the product is good, right?

SecureThroughObscure writes "ZDNet Zero-Day blogger Nate McFeters has asked the question, 'Should vulnerabilities be treated as defects?' McFeters claims that if vulnerabilities were treated as product defects, companies would have an effective way of forcing developers and business units to focus on security issue. McFeters suggests providing bonuses for good developers, and taking away from bonuses for those that can't keep up. It's an interesting approach that if used, might force companies to take a stronger stance on security related issues."